Walter Benjamin
Critic
1892-07-15
Books by Walter Benjamin
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Selected Writings
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On the Concept of History
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Quotes by Walter Benjamin
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The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the —emergency situation— in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve. Not the least reason that the latter has a chance is that its opponents, in the name of progress, greet it as a historical norm. – The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the 20th century are —still— possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it would be the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable.
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The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.
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What matters for the dialectician is having the wind of world history in his sails. Thinking for him means: to set the sails. It is the way they are set that matters. Words are his sails. The way they are set turns them into concepts.
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There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.
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Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.
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The expressions of those moving about a picture gallery show ill-concealed disappointment that they only find pictures there.
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That things are status quo is the catastrophe.
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All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.
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How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!
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No more semblance or disemblance, no more God or Man, only an immanent logic of the principle of operativity.
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The work of memory collapses time.
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Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
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Truth resists being projected into the realm of knowledge.
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Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
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What matters for the dialectician is having the wind of world history in his sails. Thinking for him means: to set the sails. It is the way they are set that matters. Words are his sails. The way they are set turns them into concepts.
Read quote -
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the —emergency situation— in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve. Not the least reason that the latter has a chance is that its opponents, in the name of progress, greet it as a historical norm. – The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the 20th century are —still— possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it would be the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable.
Read quote -
No more semblance or disemblance, no more God or Man, only an immanent logic of the principle of operativity.
Read quote -
The expressions of those moving about a picture gallery show ill-concealed disappointment that they only find pictures there.
Read quote -
The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.
Read quote -
Memory is not an instrument for surveying the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.
Read quote